The Pueblo Affair-Three Articles Ignoring Murphy's Law

...By S. L. A. Marshall Strangely ENOUGH, during the fortnight of intense agonizing over the capture of the USS Pueblo and her crew, no one mentioned the single comparable incident of the past half-year that might have helped Americans assess the national embarrassment and extract its lesson the sinking of the Israeli destroyer Elath by the Egyptians When the Elath was hit with Styx missiles not far from Port Said, 55 Israel seamen died and 48 others were wounded Both the Pueblo and the Elath, according to the weight of evidence, were proceeding in international waters at the time they were struck It was the third Styx that doomed the Israeli ship, and that rocket was fired one hour after the first two The violence done to international law in both cases should therefore be as apparent as the inability of any tribunal speaking for the family of nations to pronounce judgment, much less enforce meaningful punishment Bach provocation was an act of war—brutal, glaring and contemptuous enough to warrant a resumption of full-scale hostilities by the offended nation There is no other way to look at the situation In the Middle East, the war begun in 1948 still goes on because the losers insist on having it that way The cease-fire arranged by the United Nations in June 1967 merely dampers the flame for the time being In Korea, the war launched in 1950 has never been formally terminated The continuing and difficult truce there is marred by incidents of violence along the 38th Parallel on a steadily ascending scale Of late, South Korea has suffered most from these blows, and Seoul is annoyed that Washington has reacted so tepidly Here the parallel ends and the lesson begins Where the destruction of the Elath was followed by purposive silence and swift decision-taking, the capture of the Pueblo has provoked no more than a babble of hesitation and a clutching at straws Israel was ready with a reprisal so sure and terrible as to suggest that its responses were preset should Egypt engage in some monstrous tolly The advantage of ground along the Suez is all with the Israeli Army Cairo should have known there was enough gun power beyond the great dike lining the Canal's east bank to demolish the giant EL Nasr and Suez refineries, a $200 million blow True, the Wall Street Journal charged that the Israelis "overreacted" in their retahaThe Pueblo Affair—Three Articles tion, but the comment shed more light on a market-minded editor's values than on the politics of the Mideast When the Pueblo was overtaken and made a prize of war, the touring Governor of Michigan, speaking as a Presidential hopeful, warned against the danger of "overreacting," adding that he would not rule out the use of force Senator Eugene McCarthy, beating his way along the same trail, said overreaction was already in evidence, and if we would only behave more quietly, the men and the ship would be returned It is amazing that two men seeking the Presidency of the United States could be so naive about the factors in the problem From the moment the incident occurred, any belief that force could be used effectively was no less mistaken than the wishful notion that, given time, the North Koreans would relent and make possible a gentle solution To put it bluntly, the United States was ready with nothing The call-up of a few unready reservists was a futile gesture, the only excuse for it being that no effective counter was within Washington's means Air 'bombardment of North Korea's power structure, for example, would not have brought the release of the Pueblo—though it would have stirred stonms of indignation against the United States the world over and probably would have exploded another full-scale conflict around the 38 th Parallel And the United States is as little prepared for that as it was for the capture of the ship itself There is the rob What occurred was not remotely anticipated Those men in high places—chiefs of intelligence et al—who sent this ship on its mission had thought through only one-half of their problem, which in the end meant misunderstanding it wholly Within the Pentagon, contingency planning is a way of life, but the one contingency that arose had never been postulated Therein somebody blundered Yet, I cannot see how any person of reasonable mind can blame Commander Lloyd Bucher or his men for any part of the debacle Editonal omticism suggesting Bucher played a disreputable part and should have reacted like John Paul Jones, Lord Nelson and other great Sea Dogs is positively indecent The Commander did what he had to do There was no other option but to resist and have his ship sunk, which would either have made him responsible for starting a war or have left the U S looking craven beyond contempt The crow-eating we will have to do could turn out to be less than the crawling we might have done To lament that the Pueblo did not proceed under armed destroyer escort when off the coast near Wonsan —and many respected voices are saying this—is to cry over spilt mi-Ik The fact is, it was not done and thus the incident Here was a yawning opportunity for the one North Korean patrol boat that went at the Pueblo like a falcon goes at a pigeon Had all four patrol boats m the nearby waters come dashing at once, Bucher might have realized their object was to bag him and he might have made a run for it The North Koreans were much too smart for that Give them credit for their strategy They made their: play in exactly the right way A man like the Commander of the Pueblo is handicapped because he cannot think with the mind of a North Korean So are the people topside—the diplomats and warriors They still cannot fathom the thinking of leaders such as North Korean Premier, Krm Sung, they have no true sense of his implacable, reckless, spiteful policies The men who sat across from Kim at Pan-munjom 15 years ago got some measure of it, but they have gone on their way and their successors are loathe to believe All this explains the Pueblo incident Men m the seats of decision m Washington, passing on orders for a tangential operation in a time of great international tension, did not use common sense It is fault enough that they under-estimated the temper, nature and malevolence of a mad government, which as Lord Nelson once said, is inexcusable What is worse, they authonzed Bucher and the Pueblo to run a risk, entailing possible forfeits out of all proportion to the likely gains The Pueblo should not have been where she was, whether 10 miles from the shore or 16 To put the ship within such easy reach of a hostile coast was akin to cooking frozen dynamite or playing Russian roulette with the honor of the nation As my brother is given to remark "You don't plan and play for high stakes while ignoring Murphy's Law" Murphy's Law says, "If anything can go wrong, it will" Of late, the nation has repeatedly suffered humiliation as a result of outright thoughtlessness in high places Out of such dreary pieces of nonsense as the Bay of Pigs and the U-2 incident, nothing seems to have truly given pause to the men in power The lesson, however, should be plain enough When a nation is willing and ready to risk war and the decision to take one step or another is supposedly based upon an accurate reckoning of its preparations, the state of the national emotion, and the possible reactions of the opposition party, then many avenues are open to it, and its ering or other martial ventures need not be harshly restricted But if a nation is not ready to go to war, then its options become drastically limited It may proceed with reasonable safety only when the costs of failure or embarrassment have been fully assessed and the means of subsequent recovery are also in the plan Every mission, every undertaking, every contingency plan should, after thorough examination, be approved or rejected according to the balance between ultimate risk and possible gain What may be quite legitimately attempted may at the same time be rashly imprudent To gamble on the other party not doing the unexpected thing was, in this instance, not so much naivete as Simple-Sinionism That the United States, beset as it is with mountainous problems at home and in Southeast Asia, could react to the Pueblo seizure only with futile maneuvers and frantic hand-wringing, was entirely predictable And this was the calculation underwriting the North Korean venture They manifestly evaluated our position better than the men in Washington So there will be more innings in the nasty game now shifted to Pan-munjom as in 1951, with endless stalling, argument and insult The North Koreans enjoy it and are skillful at it, ours is Hobson's Choice Obviously the seizure of the USS Pueblo was illegal Ambassador Arthur Goldberg's account, and even the cautious phrasing of Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara in their television discussion of the incident, appear to leave no doubt about the matter Reportedly, the Russians also conceded this in private Yet it matters little Not for that reason or for any other would an international tribunal ever redress our grievances Nor will the Security Council do on our behalf what we have failed to do ourselves, whether for want of means or courage or instant wit The law does not save states, though from tune to time it may be up to a state to save the law Self-help is at the root of international affairs What nations are willing to put up with, they will probably have to suffer as well...

...In comparison, the errors of style did not really mean much For those now charged with the weightiest responsibilities of state...

...Demed that concession to national pride, Nikita Khrushchev broke up the Pans summit negotiations—which seemed likely to be barren anyway So the cancellation was hardly rued Our magistrates fumbled, mumbled and bumbled Their: gaucherie, while embarrassing, was somehow funny too The saving aspect in 1960 was that no one could conceivably have claimed literal legitimacy for the palpable intrusion m which our hapless pilot was caught On the technical merits we were clearly at fault That is what counted...

...The law may be invoked as a touchstone of nghtness, but it is only a measure, not a guarantor, of rights Nothing good may come of it, though the crew will likely be returned in the end—after a maximum of humiliation has been inflicted upon a great power by a small, venomous state Here is a spectacle to be relished by the whole Communist world, and possibly even by some peoples we rate as friends Grin and bear it There is nothing to grin about It is one of the saddest possible happenings under the sun The contrast between the latest incident and the U-2 affair of 1960 is distinct Then our magistrates at first played innocent Caught in a fib, they defiantly owned up...

...Next they pledged never to let such a thing happen again But they withheld the formality of explicit apology...